Tiffany Hansen

April 24th 2020

Professor Andrus

NUTR 1020

Fat sick and Nearly Dead Documentary

The documentary is about Joe Cross, Jo started getting rashes and had to

take a lot of medication. He was diagnosed with a condition called Urticarius

Vasculitis. Jo weighed in the upper 300’s and was obese, Jo had a very large

stomach and he decided he needed to make changes in his life. He had previously

tried everything from doctors and even witch doctors to help his rash but nothing

worked. He wanted to go on a 60 day juice only fast to help change his ways. The

juice would be made of fresh fruits and veggies only. Jo wanted to go on a road trip

to America during his fast, he was not going to eat any American food and he

knew it would be hard but he would not give up. Jo first went to New york and

then traveled cross county. He wanted to document how people could be healthier

by what we put in our bodies. The fast was much harder than he anticipated. On
day three he got very depressed and just wanted to sleep all day. He realized how

strong his emotional connection to food really was. Just to get some relief he

walked into a pizza kitchen just to smell the pizza. As Jo was traveling he liked to

talk to people on the street about fasting and their experience with dieting? He

would offer them some of the juice he drinks and see if they liked it, surprisingly

many people said it was good, one woman said it tasted like grass. He mentions

that the juices they sell at the stores have added sugar and have been processed too

much. In this day and age he talks about how people eat too much processed food

and are less active than our hunter gatherer ancestors.

On day 31 his stomach was noticeably smaller. He realizes that there are two

major groups we should be consuming, micronutrients and macronutrients on a

daily basis. Many of the people he talks to on the street are over 300 pounds and

almost all of them say they would rather eat whatever they wanted, instead of

living longer due to self control.

On day 42 he says he can feel his hip bones for the first time in 10 years. At

day 49 Jo has lost 67 pounds. Jo convinced a trucker he met on the road with the

same medical condition to do a 10 day juice fast. The trucker had a very large

stomach and weighed 428 pounds. The trucker did the fast and then started

teaching his community to do the same. Many people that watched Jo’s
documentary decided to do at least a 6 day and up to a 30 day juice fast, he started

a trend on the internet of people expressing their experiences.

I chose this documentary because I have had weight problems for ten years

and nothing I do can help me lose weight, I was curious what it was about. The

Authoris Jo Cross and he is just a normal guy with no previous experience that

wanted to lose weight to get away from medication and help his skin condition. It

was produced in 2010 and got a large following afterwards, most likely it is still

trending today. I learned that the reason Americans are so over weight is due to fast

food and eating too many carbs and not enough vegetables and fruit. After

watching this documentary I was convinced to make a small change in my life. I

usually skip breakfast but now I want to drink fresh fruit and vegetable juice every

morning.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1z5WjjVL5c